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Usually, when something or someone is referred to as being "Mickey Mouse," it's a derisive term indicating they're of little importance and not to be taken seriously. All of that could soon change, though. Unfortunately, the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA) cleared committee hearings and is on its way to the Senate for a vote.
Those of you who have read me for a while (lucky dogs, the lot of you) have heard me rail about things like the DMCA and the general stifling of technology thru legislation. This would be worse than all of them, even the dreaded sledgehammer of the DMCA. Political students out there, pay attention, because the CBDTPA is a perfect example of what happens when legislators are more concerned with lining their pockets than looking out for their constituents.
What the CBDTPA would do is require every digitial device sold in the US to have built-in safeguards to ensure that the works of copyright holders are being protected. So a CD-ROM will not be able to play a burned CD, for example. Note, though, that "digital device" is by no means confined to computer hardware. It's a simple solution to a self-created problem, which is precisely why the imbeciles at Disney and the RIAA have been lining pockets on Capitol Hill to get this dirty deed done.
The chief pocket-linee on this issue is Senator Fritz Hollings (D-SC) . Basically, whatever integrity he had remaining after a career in politics was bought and sold by the soulless Walt Disney Company. Mickey Mouse isn't just for funny cartoons and birthday parties anymore, kids; now he's playing the unwelcome and unnecessary role of digital watchdog, trying to cling furiously to outmoded copyright laws while quashing anything that could be used to circumvent them.
It's wrong that Disney is leading this fight, which is very much a fight against innovation. Disney studios have been the apex of technology in Hollywood for years, pioneering many aspects of animation and moviemaking. Now they're becoming the nadir of integrity in Hollywood - which is an incredibly dubious distinction - by leading the latest fight against the inevitable progress of technology.
Don't think they don't know it's inevitable, either. The RIAA and MPAA have to know they're fighting what will ultimately prove to be a losing battle. Their hope here is to stem current innovations, and stifle some of the soon-to-be ones, by tying the whole thing up with litigation and legislation. The DMCA was bad enough, though; the CBDTPA is plain beyond the pale. I shouldn't have to pay more for my hardware to make up for the lack of business acumen, creativity, and technological awareness of fat-cat media executives.
But hope is not yet lost. DigitalConsumer.org, a site that did not exist six weeks ago, is helping to lead a grass-roots movement against this greed-driven and ruinous piece of legislation. The group claims to have over 24,000 members, who have sent off over 80,000 faxes and emails to their elected officials in Washington. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is also involved in spreading the word about the evils of the CBDTPA.
Maybe all those emails and faxes are doing some good. The Senate Judiciary Committee, which would have some say on the bill due to its relation to copyrights, has received over 3500 comments criticizing the bill. By the same token, they have not received a single letter, fax, or email in support of the CBDTPA. "It seems like there's a groundswell of support from regular users," spokesman Mimi Devlin said. Good.
That groundswell isn't confined to regular users, though. As expected, lobbyists representing the major high-tech players have been all over this recently. They argue that the CBDTPS would hurt their ability to innovate, and they're right. The PC industry has been built upon a steady stream of new and better technology, and if there's a law in place to suppress that, then there's no need to innovate or even improve. There would also be no reason for consumers to buy a new PC, since their existing one would let them do whatever they wanted with their digital media. The entertainment industry doesn't care about crippling the PC industry, though; in fact, they see the high-tech players as their rivals. The RIAA and MPAA have been complaining that companies like Intel are reluctant to work with them on digital rights issues. Why should Intel, or any other company, be expected to cut its own throat because music and movie moguls can't come up with a business model that embraces technology as opposed to running scared from it?
The movie industry swore the VCR would be the death of them, and they fought against it for years. It turns out that the sale of movies on VHS tapes brought in tons of revenue, while not hurting movie ticket sales one bit. It was incongruous to the kind of narrow-minded simpletons who ran movie studios that people will pay to see a movie in the theater and in their homes. The problem is, the narrow-minded simpletons are still there, and their specious arguments are the same in principle.
If the music and movie industries think PCs will be the death of their profits, then I encourage them to stop using computers. Why support something that's only going to drive you out of business, after all? Go back to reel-to-reel recording, typewriters, and hand filing and see what happens. Maybe that will teach these cretins that copyrights are not to be wielded like a sledgehammer, and that, like many things in this very digital age, the nature of copyrights needs to be re-examined. Maybe it will also teach them that they need computers and high technology, and that crippling another industry thru needless legislation isn't the way to prop up their own, nor it is the answer to their collective lack of vision and imagination.
10 April 2002